Rights are best guarded when each person and group guards for others those rights they wish guarded for themselves.

Coveting, pouting, or tearing others down does not elevate your standing, nor does demeaning someone else improve your self-image.

Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don't rock the boat but don't even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.

So today we celebrate the gift of victory over every fall we have ever experienced, every sorrow we have ever known, every discouragement we have ever had, every fear we have ever faced-to say nothing of our resurrection from death and forgiveness for our sins. That victory is available to us because of events that transpired on a weekend precisely like this nearly two millennia ago in Jerusalem.

Somebody like you taught somebody like me.

Don't give up when the pressure mounts. Face your doubts. Master you fears.

No eternal learning can take place without that quickening of the Spirit from heaven.